Carl Hancock Rux

Carl Hancock Rux in 2012. Photo by Mann Benoit. Licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy Wikipedia.

Carl Hancock Rux
Born	Carl Stephen Hancock New York City, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Poet, Playwright, Novelist, Essayist, Recording Artist, Actor
Language	English
Ethnicity	African American
Period	1990–present
Literary movement	Afro Futurism
Notable work(s)	Asphalt, Rux Revue, Talk, Pagan Operetta
Notable award(s)	Alpert Award in the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts Prize, Village Voice Literary prize, Obie Award, Bessie Award, (BAX) Arts & Artists in Progress Award, (FGA) Black History Month Honoree
Influences Julio Cortázar, Ernesto Sabato, Julio Llamazares, Gayl Jones, James Baldwin, Oscar Brown Jr.

Carl Hancock Rux (born March 24, ) is an African-American poet, prose writer, performer, and recording artist.

Life

Overview

Rux is the former head of the MFA Writing for Performance Program at the California Institute of the Arts (2006-2009) and has taught at various other universities. He is the author of 3 books, including the OBIE award winning play Talk, has been a contributing writer for Interview magazine, among others, and is an occasional guest host/writer for WNYC/WQXR's Jerome L. Greene Performance Space.

Youth and influences

Rux was born Carl Stephen Hancock in Harlem, New York City, Rux's biological mother (Carol Jean Hancock) suffered from schizophrenia and was institutionalized shortly after his birth. The identity of his biological father is unknown. After the death of his maternal grandmother Geneva (Rux) Hancock, he entered the New York City foster care system at the age of four.

He was legally adopted by his great uncle and aunt, James Henry Rux and Arsula Rux (née Cottrell) at the age of 15 upon which his surname was legally changed to Rux.

As a teenager, Carl Rux was exposed to jazz music by his adoptive parents, including the work of Oscar Brown Jr., John Coltrane, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln. While heavily influenced by jazz music traditions, he also became a member of the Harlem Writers Workshop, a summer journalism training program for inner city youth founded by African American journalists and sponsored by Columbia University and The Xerox Corporation.

Unable to decide between music, literature, and theater Rux entered the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts where he studied both visual art and voice, during which time he sang with the Boys Choir of Harlem and Hezekiah Walker's Love Fellowship gospel choir and took private acting classes with Gertrude Jeanette's Hadley Players and Robert Earl Jones, father of actor James Earl Jones.

He is a graduate of Columbia University, and also studied at the American University of Paris as well as the University of Ghana at Legon.

After graduating college, Rux wrote theater, film and music criticism for several magazines and publications including Essence, Interview, and (later) American Theater. During this time Rux also became influenced by the Lower East Side poetry scene and exposed to the work of experimental musicians such as David Murray,, Mal Waldron, Butch Morris, singer Jeanne Lee; poet Jayne Cortez; and theater artists Laurie Carlos and Robbie McCauley.

Author

Rux is one of several poets (including Paul Beatty, Tracie Morris, Dael Orlandersmith, Willie Perdomo, Kevin Powell, Maggie Estep, Reg E. Gaines, Edwin Torres and Saul Williams) to emerge from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, most of whom were included in the poetry anthology Aloud, Voices From the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, winner of the 1994 American Book Award. His first book of poetry, Pagan Operetta received the Village Voice Literary prize and was featured on the weekly's cover story: Eight Writers on the Verge of (Impacting) the Literary Landscape.Rux is the author of the novel Asphalt and the OBIE Award winning play Talk.

Theater

Rux is the author of several plays.His first, Song of Sad Young Men ( written in response to his older brother's death from AIDS ), was directed by Trazana Beverly and starred Isaiah Washington and received 11 AUDELCO nominations. Rux's most notable play is Talk, premiered at the Joseph Papp Public Theater in 2002 and directed by Marion McClinton The play won 7 OBIE awards.

Text for Dance

Rux has worked as a writer and frequent guest performer in dance, collaborating with Marlies Yearby (choreographer of the Broadway musical Rent); the Urban Bush Women; Jane Comfort & Co.; Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company; Robert Moses' Kin; and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Rux received a BESSIE award for his direction of the Lisa Jones/Alva Rogers dance musical, Stained. In 2005, and in 2009, he donated his archives to the Billy Rose Theater Division of the New York Public Library as well as to the Film and Video/Theater and Dance Library Archives of the California Institute of the Arts.

Opera

Rux conceived and wrote the book and libretto for the opera Makandal, with music by Yosvaney Terry; and the book and libretto for the opera, Blackamoor Angel, with music by Deidre Murray.

Musician

Rux recorded on Reg E. Gaines CD Sweeper Don't Clean My Streets (Polygram), and his debut CD, Cornbread, Cognac & Collard Green Revolution (unreleased) was produced by Hendryx and Mark Batson, featuring musicians Craig Harris, Ronnie Drayton and Lonnie Plaxico. His CD Rux Revue was recorded and produced in Los Angeles by the Dust Brothers, Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf. Rux recorded a follow up album, Apothecary Rx, (selected by French writer Phillippe Robert for his 2008 publication "Great Black Music": an exhaustive tribute of 110 albums including 1954's "Lady Sings The Blues" by Billie Holiday, the work of Jazz artists Oliver Nelson, Max Roach, John Coltrane, rhythm and blues artists Otis Redding, Ike & Tina Turner, Curtis Mayfield, George Clinton; as well as individual impressions of Fela Kuti, Jimi Hendrix, and Mos Def.) His 4th studio CD, Good Bread Alley, was released by Thirsty Ear Records.

Actor

Rux has appeared in several theater projects, most notably originating the title role in the folk opera production of The Temptation of St. Anthony, based on the Gustave Flaubert novel, directed by Robert Wilson with book, libretto and music by Bernice Johnson Reagon and costumes by Geoffrey Holder. The production debuted in June 2003 as part of the RuhrTriennale festival in Duisburg Germany with subsequent performances at the Greek Theater in Siracusa, Italy; the Festival di Peralada in Peralada, Spain; the Palacio de Festivales de Cantabria in Santander, Spain; and Sadler's Wells in London, Great Britain; the Teatro Piccinni in Bari, Italy; the Het Muziektheater in Amsterdam, Netherlands; the Teatro Arriaga in Bilbao and the Teatro Espanol in Madrid, Spain. The opera made its American premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music/ BAM Next Wave Festival in October 2004 and official "world premiere" at the Paris Opera, becoming the first all African American opera to perform on its stage since the inauguration of the Académie Nationale de Musique - Théâtre de l'Opéra in 1875.

Rux appeared in the film, The Grand Inquisitor (as The One) directed by Tony Torn, screenplay by Ruth Margraff; the documentary The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: a Film About Gil Scott-Heron (as “Carl Hancock Rux”); the feature film The Bratz (as music teacher Mr. Whitman); the documentary "Brooklyn Boheme" (as “Carl Hancock Rux”)co-directed by Diane Paragas and Nelson George; and "Migrations", a feature film directed by Nelson George.

Radio Host

Rux was the host and artistic programming director of the WBAI radio show, Live from The Nuyorican Poets Cafe; contributing correspondent for XM radio's The Bob Edwards Show and frequent guest host on WNYC .

Activism

Rux joined New Yorkers Against Fracking, a new coalition of organizations calling for a ban on natural gas drilling using hydraulic fracturing, lead by actors Mark Ruffalo and Melissa Leo and musicians Natalie Merchant, Joan Osborne, Tracy Bonham, and numerous others.

Rux was co-producer and curator of WeDaPeoples Cabaret, an annual event through a partnership between MAPP and Harlem Stage inviting the audience to imagine themselves as part of a larger social organism as citizens without borders in a globally interdependent world.

A longtime resident of Fort Greene Brooklyn, Carl Rux worked with the Fort Greene association and New York philanthropist Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel to erect a cultural medallion at the Carlton Avenue home where novelist Richard Wright lived between May and October, 1938 and penned his seminal work, Native Son

Rux is a member of Take Back the Night, a foundation seeking to end sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence, sexual abuse and all other forms of sexual violence.

Academic

Rux is formally the Head of the Writing for Performance Program at the California Institute of Arts and has taught and or been an artist in residence at Brown University, Hollins University, UMass at Amhurst, Duke University, Stanford University, University of Iowa, and University of Wisconsin at Madison, among others.

Quotations

1.“There is something called Black in America, and there is something called White in America, and I know them when I see them, but I will forever be unable to explain the meaning of them, because they are not real, even though they have a very real place in my daily way of seeing, a fundamental relationship to my ever-evolving understanding of history and a critical place in my relationship to humanity.”

2."What we (the oppressed) have been working with as an identity is actually born out of a dream. Our subscription to this dream is our ignorance of the reality of human existence."

3. "There comes a time in your life, when you discover an emptiness. You have no thought of yourself as empty— You have no thought of yourself as empty and you have been operating as if you were not, but a day comes when you are made aware of it—your emptiness… And you yearn to be full. The pain of discovering this emptiness is unequaled by anything, except the pain of this yearning to be full. That is when you begin, for the first time in your life—for the first time with your life– to search for a language, a tongue, a voice, a means of articulation."

4. "We are not taught to retreat. We are taught to advance, to walk forward from the place of our beginning…which makes me all the more curious about the ground behind us, the ground we have not covered."

5."It comforts us to think we were once privy to something that is no more."

Recognition

Rux was named by the The New York Times Magazine (along with Pulitzer prize winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, Tony award winner Audra McDonald, actor Gwyneth Paltrow, choreographer Ronald K. Brown, comedian Dave Attell and authors Edwidge Danticat and Daniel Pinchbeck, among others) as one of "Thirty Artists Under Thirty" predicted to make an impact on American culture. Rux also appeared on the cover of the New York Times Magazine with actress Paz de la Huerta, as well as the cover of "American Theater" Magazine with playwright Tony Kushner. His essay on the rapper Eminem and race in America ended up in The Best American Music Writing 2004. He is the subject of the "Voices of America" television documentary, Carl Hancock Rux, Coming of Age, recipient of the CINE Golden Eagle Award; and co-wrote and narrated the radio documentary, Walt Whitman: Songs of Myself, awarded the New York Press Club Journalism Award for Entertainment News

Publications

Poetry

• Elmina Blues. New York, 1977.
• Pagan Operetta (Poetry/Short Fiction/SemioText). New York: Fly by Night / A Gathering of the Tribes, 1998.

Plays

• Talk (play). New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2004.
• Makandal (Drama/Poetry)
• Geneva Cottrell, Waiting for the Dog to Die (Drama)
• Smoke, Lilies and Jade (Drama)

Novels

• Asphalt. New York: Atria Books, 2004.
• The Exalted

Non-fiction

• Everything but the Burden: What white people are taking from black culture. New York: Broadway, 2003.

Carl Hancock Rux I Got a Name.mp4

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

Audio / video

Geneva by Carl Hancock Rux

Discography

• Rux Revue. Sony, 1999.
• Apothecary Rx. Giant Step Records, 2004.
• Good Bread Alley. Thirsty Ear Recordings, 2006.
• Homeostasis

See also

• African-American poets
• List of U.S. poets

External links

Poems

• Carl Hancock Rux at The Poetry Center at Smith College

Audio / video

• Carl Hancock Rux at MySpace
• Carl Hancock Rux at YouTube

Books

• Carl Hancock Rux at Amazon.com

About

• Carl Hancock Rux at Victoria Sanders & Associates.
• Carl Hancock Rux Official website.